Out today, officially, is the new volume of Dark Tales. Been looking forward to this one for a long time. Within is my story, ‘Divination‘, which, if I had to put a tag onto would call it ‘existential horror’.

Many other great stories in there I’m sure (not got my copy yet, of course, seeing as it was only out today), and the cover story is ‘Touch, Typing‘ by the superb Georgina Bruce.

You can purchase this shiny volume of nightmares from the Dark Tales shop – – http://www.darktalesbooks.com/ for a mere £3.99, which will barely even buy you a pint in Edinburgh these days.

It seems like every time I take a look at the Dark Tales website these days there is something new going on.

The competition format has changed now to a monthly competition (first new deadline is end of June). Top prize is £100 plus publication. But, elsewhere on the site it says that general submissions are also being accepted. Dark Tales is run by Sean Jeffery and, with reference to my previous post, he is another lone wolf running the whole thing by himself. Pretty impressive really when you see what he turns out, and hearing that the competitions get around 500 entries each time.

Another new feature is the ability to purchase single stories from the current issue – Dark Tales Vol.13. So, for the price of a Crunchie you can read my story Disconnection. And I notice there is some artwork up for volume 14, which includes my story Divination.

My story, ‘Divination‘ has come 2nd in the Dark Tales Autumn Competition. It will appear in Volume 14 due out later in the year.

That’s the first acceptance this year and I am delighted to be appearing in volume 13 and 14 of Dark Tales – which, by the way, is an excellent and long-running magazine of horror and speculative fiction. Check out the website here – Dark Tales. And check out the list of other winners here – Result.

This is one of my favourite days of the year. There is something so clean and cathartic about New Year’s Day. No more countdowns – to Christmas – to midnight. Just the fresh year opening up in front of you, fertile and promising. Although, most people will be viewing it through the haze of hangover and with questions like: did I really do that last night?

I thought I would use the spirit of New Year’s resolutions to make a statement of intent for this blog (and for my own writing as well). This is a blog about writing; for news about my own writing and for news about various competitions and other things to do with the world of writing. I need to keep it focussed on that and go off on too many tangents – otherwise I should begin writing a second blog, and there’s only so many hours in the day.

So, this blog is really about my attempts to scratch out a career as a writer – mainly of speculative fiction at the moment as that seems to be the form that I find it easiest to express myself in. Last year, from March 2008 when I began writing again in earnest, I wrote (and completed) 13 short stories and 1 piece of micro-fiction(just to see if I could do it). 4 stories have been accepted for publication and 8 are submitted at the moment. I also wrote 20,000 words of a novel that I’ve since shelved after it ground sluggishly to a halt – although the story elements formed the basis for my short story ‘Chasing Memories’ which I currently have submitted to Black Static. More promisingly, I am still working on an apocalyptic novella, current title: ‘The Gardener’; current word count – 22,341 and going strong. I anticipate it to be a maximum of about 40,000 words and I’m enjoying writing it, which is the important thing.

I will continue with the short stories once I am finished, and I hope to have, let’s say, 10 published this year. I would be thrilled with that quite honestly.

Albedo One, the Irish magazine of speculative fiction has launched its yearly Aeon award. The award is geared towards new writers in any speculative category – sci-fi, horror, fantasy etc…

The prize is a whopping €1000! Which, these days, is practically the same as £1000. Of course the award also brings publication in Albedo One and excellent exposure for a new writer (such as myself); 2nd and 3rd place brings publication and €200 and €100 respectively. All for a meagre entry fee of €7.

It’s one of the biggest prizes I’ve come across for a speculative fiction competition, and I’ll definitely submit something for it. Submissions are open until 30th Nov 2009.